The fun and fear of flying.

Abstract

The first time I flew solo I was nervous. As a 17 year old Air Training Corps cadet my preparation had been twenty two winch launches with an instructor in the Slingsby T 31 open glider: a total flying time of one hour. I was then briefed for three solo circuits. My visible shaking was assumed to be due to the cold November afternoon, and I was hastily lent a warm aircrew jacket before being sent alone into the air. On the first circuit I was too low on the final approach and was relieved to just clear the perimeter fence and reach the landing strip. The instructor berated me for this potentially disastrous error of judgment and then sent me off again for two thankfully uneventful circuits. Two years later at an airfield near Southport I taxied out for my first solo flight in a powered aeroplane, a de Havilland Chipmunk. Again I felt nervous, but wearing a flying suit, helmet, parachute, and Mae West life jacket I felt dressed for the occasion. Indeed, I felt a strange sense of comradeship with the wartime fighter pilots who had raced down the same runway thirty years earlier to defend Liverpool. But my task was infinitely less demanding and my only enemies gravity and the weather. The short flight was uneventful and the landing quite reasonable (the saying being that a good landing is one you walk away from). Instead of pursuing a military career I chose to work in public health, first as a public health inspector and later as a research officer at an epidemiology unit. At the age of 291 was fortunate enough to be accepted for medical school and with my wife and young son moved up to Leicester. The house we bought turned out to be situated only two miles from a small airfield, and light aircraft came over regularly. The flying bug, which had lain dormant for ten years, began to stir. After completing three years of medical studies, I could not resist a short trial flight at the local aeroclub. The Cessna 152 is a small, docile, high wing two seater. Surprisingly, I had not forgotten everything and, hooked once more, after four and a half hours dual flying I went solo again. The fairly intensive dual revision had included stalling, spinning, engine failures, and other unusual events that one trusts will never happen. My previous university air squadron flying hours counted towards the requirements for obtaining the private pilot's licence, considerably reducing the time and expense involved. Although I cannot afford to go up very often, half an hour a month between two and five thousand feet is excellent treatment to clear the head. A fellow medical student recently accompanied me, and we enjoyed surveying the city and county from high up and in one glance seeing most of the hospitals at which we train. As I have flown over Leicestershire and the surrounding counties I have noticed the many disused wartime airfields that litter the countryside. Forty years ago most were active flying bases and the sky was often a hostile place. The biographies of wartime aircrew